Remembered Prisoners of a
Forgotten WarAn Oral History of the Korean POWs

Author: Lewis H. Carlson

St. Martin's Press, April, 2001

This book is a product of interviews with men who had been prisoners of war,
men who for decades did not want to talk about their experiences but now tell
their stories. The writer, Lewis H. Carlson, is a retired professor of history
and Director of American Studies at Western Michigan University. He is angry
about the pop-culture and Cold War nonsense that maligned these American prisoners
of war, and he captures some of the bitterness that these men have felt over
the years. There was talk in the United States in the 1950s about the Korean
War generation being weakened by over-indulgent mothers and being insufficiently
schooled on morality. These, it was alleged, caused those taken prisoner in
the Korean War to fail to stand up to Communist brainwashing.

The former prisoners did not talk to Carlson with exaggerations or fantasies.
Their descriptions are of the down-to-earth variety that rise above myth and official distortion.
This book says something about the Cold War and its concept of brainwashing.
It tells what happened to the American prisoners during the Korean war and pays them the respect that is their due.